Windows Installer Error 2908 when installing bulky setup projects

On one of our test PC (a virtual one) with VS 2008 Beta2 installed on Windows XP, we got the following problem. If any of Add-in Express for Office and .NET product packages are installed, uninstalled and re-installed for the second time, the “Error 2908″ message is shown a tremendous number of times. It is obvious that the message is shown for every file included into the package. What is worse, when the setup program is complete, you get this error again when you install or uninstall any MSI-based product. That is, from the common point of view, Windows becomes inoperable. Windows Installer Error Messages doesn’t provide any useful info.

If you google for “Error 2908″, you’ll find out that this error occurs for a number of applications. Workarounds exist for installing Office 2000 on Windows 98 or ME, NET Framework 1.1, Visual Studio 2005. But none of those workarounds worked for us.

Then we found an interesting post on the www.eggheadcafe.com forum: they added Crystal Reports merge modules to their setup and got this error. This resulted in “reinstalling windows on computers affected with the error.” What Microsoft suggested is “ask Business Objects company that produces the Crystal Report for assistance”. As you may assume, Crystal Reports supporters sent poor devils back to Microsoft.

However, we googled out some vague notes that the cause of this error may relate to the number of files included into the package. This was somehow backed up by Orca that reported the following incomprehensible warning message: “Feature ‘DefaultFeature’ has XXXX components. This could cause problems on Win9X systems. You should try to have fewer than 817 components per feature.”

To verify this assumption, we created a simple setup with some 2000 files. Nevertheless, this setup program has run through the install/uninstall/install procedure successfully. But when we added a custom action (Install, Rollback, and Uninstall), we got Error 2098 again. Moreover, it turned out that install/uninstall is enough for breaking the Windows Installer down. Then we found that the number of files that does the trick lies between 1000 and 1022. We don’t know if this number depends on the number of custom actions.

This research forced us to decrease the number of Add-in Express files by moving demo projects to a ZIP archive. And in this way, we overpowered Error 2908.

But this was not the end of the story. We felt obliged to find a way for our customers to restore their PCs if they have got into this trap by installing Add-in Express.

The solution was found by a pure chance. Thank Heavens.

Deleting the following key restores the functionality of the Windows Installer:

We don’t know who created this key: repairing Office and all .NET Framework versions on that PC doesn’t restore the key. Currently, we believe this key is created by Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. We don’t know what impact the deletion of this key may have on any software on that PC.

What makes us think the key is suspicious? The registry contains the following branches:

Further on, I will refer to branch S-1-5-18 as ShortSID and S-1-5-21-1409082233-343818398-725345543-1004 as LongSID.

Our experiments showed that products installed for all users fall into the ShortSID/Products branch. Accordingly, products installed for the current user only, fall into the LongSID/Products branch. For every file in the setup project, we got an entry in the Components branch. This entry contains a registry value whose name refers to the product’s entry in the Products branch. Hope this makes sense :)

The key mentioned above looks suspicious for the following reasons:
Firstly, it is located in the LongSID/Components branch (the registry value is (B3414A45B4B628042B8446B35265C1BC), but, in the LongSID/Products branch, there is no corresponding product.

Secondly, the value of this registry value contains a question mark instead of a colon in the path: C?\WINDOWS\system32\rgb9rast_2.dll
We tried deleting this key and it helped. Finally, we tried creating this key on a clean PC and reproduced Error 2908 with our test setup project.

Conclusions:
1. It required 3 days X 4 developers to fix the problem that, we know for sure, was not engendered by us.
2. Any developer can create a setup project that may make Windows practically inoperable.
3. This developer will be blamed for no reason at all.

Update:
Thanks to Gabe’s comment, another thought crossed my mind: It looks like the mysterious key may be created when you update .NET Framework 2.0 (I’m almost sure the installer for VS 2008 Beta 2 did update it). Sorry we didn’t try to reproduce the “This application must be installed to run. Please run Setup from the location where you originally installed the application.” error reported by Gabe.

A while back I ran into the post stating that deleting the keys that contain values with “C?” allows installing F#.

But all this is very sad indeed, after publishing this article I posted all pertaining information to a Microsoft newsgroup; it was as early as in November 2007, to no avail :(

You are a godsend!! I had the error from an installer to fix an error I was getting for the Clean Manger tool and this solved the cleanmgr.exe error bypassing the installer fix.
I had 2 LongSID’s that I deleted to make it work and always remember to export your registry before hacking away at it.
Thanks a lot!

Thank you so much. It took me 3 days and 2 pages of Google results so find this but thank you. I had a similar issue with installer files but my UserData was not the same I just deleted the ‘component’ for all of them till it worked.

This problem may be originated by so many sources, like new XP SP3, wrong Microsoft .Net, etc, etc that I could not see any solution nearby. And I have a so tight time frame to finish this work. You saved my day. Thank you so much.

After hours of searching and reading this is the ONE thing that solved the problem!!

It should also be noted that this is the fix for the “This application must be installed to run. Please run Setup from the location where you originally installed the application.” error. At least for Office (2000).

I started receiving this error after switching from an nVidia card to an ATI card. During the install process, I’m almost certain the ATI software asked to install .NET 2.0. I went ahead and allowed it (which in retrospect may have been a mistake because I already had 3.0 and 3.5 installed?). At least I think that might be the cause.

I have the install problem (trying to intstall iTunes) However this ‘suspicious key’ seems to be in the shortSiD folder. Any ideas what i should do? I dont think I have .Net framework installed. Could this be the problem?

Unfortunately, I can’t help you with this. We still don’t know what software created this key on our PCs (yes, it’s in the ShortSiD, Jonny). In other words, it’s possible that this issue doesn’t relate to the .NET Framework at all. Sorry, I can’t even give you any decent advice.

Thanks for the Great Solution.. I spent over 3 days to fix the issue. But this solution fixed it in few minutes. I faced the Internal Error 2908 issue with my code warrior installation. I am sure the culprit who creates the Key is VS2008.
Because before i installing VS2008, i installed CW. It worked fine. But in another PC, i installed the VS2008 first. Then i tried to install CW. I got internal error.
The culprit is MS VS2008… Thanks…

Hello and thank you! I just finished my very first msi, and tested it on all my machines, only to find this error on my XP, my official dump set. You saved myself at least a year or so, trying figgure that one out.

Thx a lot, you are the best man)) I reinstalled NET framework, updated winInstaller two times and even downloaded this stupid windows installer clean up wich didn’t delete anything, and now I’ve find this great post) I’ll spread it)

This was very helpfull, thanks!
The “mysterious” key in our case was created by the setup. Here it stores information of the specific install. It looks like the setup did not remove the Components subkey in the first de-install. When we removed the components subkey the problem was solved!

Made my day! Thanks! The entry is relate to a dll that is part of DirectX. Dunno, what is the relationship. I have a clients notebook with this error installing MSICUU2 and Office have had a mystic behaviour (it stated it hasn’t been installed for this user). And this entry is also present on my net machine, but that one has no any kind of mystic behaviour. :-)

Thanks for your solution. It didn’t worked for me but I’m feeling that I’m too close to the solution. There are different registry keys in the Components folder which are given with ‘C?’, shall I delete every key in the Components folder starts with C? because I can’t find the same registry keys that you suggested to delete.

I can’t recommend deleting these keys: I don’t know consequences. I suppose however that you can try deleting them. I strongly suggest that you create a copy of the registry before you modify it. An please (please!) post your results here!

Thank you but deleting the ‘C?’ keys didn’t help to fix the problem. I’m still having the following errors and am stucked (after a month dealing with this frustrating problem):

– Error 643: When I’m trying to install the updates via Windows Update (those are all started with the error of Silverlight 09.05.2012 update: KB2690729)

– Error 2908: When I’m trying to install some software like iTunes, Skype, Microsoft Fix it Center-beta (upgrade or clean installation): it gives this error when it’s trying to register the components…

For over 15 years I’m using windows systems and started with dos and I’m done. Really. The whole computer industry is such a big lie. I’m a designer and I can’t work without a headache with a 8gb quad core machine. I can’t afford to buy a Mac but when I have the money I’ll swear that I’ll completely say goodbye to this hopeless windows system… I’m sick of it…

Thanks again for your help Andrei. If anyone finds any other solution about this please write down here cos’ I’ll check this thread time to time.

Thank you,
you saved my day. I “only” spent 1/2 a day trying to understand what was wrong with my windows xp. I was on the point of reinstalling everything, when I found this note.
Actually the problem showed up with a cryptic “MsiAPICallFailure ErrorCode: 110(0x6e)” message, and only after a deeper investigation I spotted a 2908 Error message that took me here.
Needless to say the Microsoft “fix it” tool didn’t work at all….

Im from Philippine and I have this problem for months now.. my microsoft office application did’nt run there giving me “low in memory or virtual something” i run a cross of your blog… and I follow your instruction it work like a charm… now in running all microsoft office fine…. thank you… so much…

This technology is now available for our custom development services only. Based on the Add-in Express for Office core, it is designed for building custom-tailored Office add-ins with far less coding than you usually have to do. Plus, it includes all Add-in Express features such as True RAD, visual designers, Outlook view and form regions, etc.

Get the best platform for building version-neutral, fast and easy deployable plug-ins by using Add-in Express projects templates, visual designers, components and wizards in combination with a perfect Delphi compiler.

This is an extension for Visual Studio that allows developers to quickly create WiX-based setup projects in a familiar Visual Studio way.

The Designer for WiX Toolset lets you forget the plain Windows Installer XML and concentrate on your deployment logic. It integrates several editors with the Visual Studio IDE and provides a set of vdproj designers to configure the file system, registry, user interface, custom actions, launch conditions and more for your setup projects.

The innovative technology for customizing Outlook views and forms. It is included in all Add-in Express for Office products and can be used to extend Outlook views, e-mail, task and appointment windows, To-Do bar, Reading and Navigation panes with your own custom sub-panes.

Microsoft and the Office logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in
the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.